BYOB Birmingham is a one-night exhibition where artists are invited to bring their own digital projectors (the beamer of the title) and explore the medium of projection by creating a collaborative happening of moving light, sound and performance.

Antonio Roberts and Pete Ashton are organising things and it’ll be presented by VIVID as part of the Flatpack Festival on Friday 16 March 2012.

If you’d like to get involved then details are on the website.

Pretty sure this is the first .gif on CiB too.

a one day festival showcasing contemporary artists who misuse and abuse computer hardware and software to striking effect.

The main GLI.TC/H website is here. Good luck getting anything useful out of that one. Best to head over to Vivid’s website to see the programme of screenings, performances, workshops and lectures.

It’s all happening on 19 November. For more info, Antonio Roberts has been running previews on his blog for the past week or so.

Good to see last weekend’s Birmingham Zine Festival looking busy. This is a slideshow from Antonio Roberts.

After his previously well received talk on the use of open source and art, Antonio is back to discuss issues of copyright and his own experiences as an artist in the world of open source.

Freedom in Creativity will be held at Aston Science Park at 7.30pm. If you can’t make it, the talk will also be broadcast online and made available for streaming shortly afterward.

Big Blank Canvas

Big Blank Canvas is a project managed and devised by Fierce (on behalf of the council who are responsible for the bid itself) which, in its first version, is asking people:

• What do you do in your cultural life in Birmingham, and where?
• What would you like to see happen as part of Birmingham City of Culture in 2013, and where?
• Where would you like to have a cultural experience in Birmingham?

The second question has generated the most interesting ideas so far. Here are a few that jumped out at me:

a touring show for kids and families playing a different suburban park every weekend in the summer hols; with locals creating and participating (from Rob)

Literal street art – a day with no traffic when the streets can be used as a gigantic canvas by communities all over the city, free balloon flights to view the full effect… (from Mark Scourse)

Shut down all the major cultural institutions for a month and promote/support cultural events and activities across the outer city in non traditional venues (from The Blade)

The aim is for the site to be up in this form for the next couple of months, after which it’ll change somehow – responding to the ideas people put forward.

There’s also a Facebook Page and Twitter account you can follow to keep up with what people are suggesting.

I should also say (for the purposes of disclosure) that I’ve done some work with Fierce on the concept/design behind this one.

Cultural Birmingham – Have Your Say!

This is the bit that has been aimed specifically at under-25’s. Antonio Roberts was asked to get involved with the steering group for this and has written up some info about it. Again, it’s an online consultation exercise:

There is a three-page questionnaire that young ‘uns can fill out, but more interestingly I think it’d be better to get involved in the discussion on the Facebook Group (liek wot all da cool kids iz doin)

G’wan, have a go

Irrespective of the City of Culture bid, it’d be nice to show that folks around these parts really care about the cultural life of the city they live in and have some good ideas for how to build on/show off what we’ve got. Go nuts and use this to air your wildest dreams, fervent passions or give a mention to those things that you’ve seen elsewhere and wish would happen in Birmingham.

In Antonio’s words:

It’s a year-long project by myself and Jon Harrington about deadlines and waiting. It’s possible that we may post more information about it, but in time

In Jon’s words:

Deadline started on January 1st and since then one still image from Antonio’s film and one sentence from my short story have been going live every day